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Bob (Altman) le Flambeur. The contrast is between "the daylight gambler and the player at night" (Balzac), the numb drifting of George Segal versus the manic vaudeville routines of Elliott Gould. They meet at the poker table and bond over plastered improv. "Twenty bucks says you can't name the seven dwarfs." "Dumbo... Dumbo flew." In their shadow world, everything is makeshift: Shaving cream applied to welts, cereal and beer for breakfast at a stranger's place following a night in jail. Everything is performance: The guys pretend to be cops to scare off a jumpy john in drag (Bert Remsen), the hustler seduces the writer back into the game with the ol' "one-armed piccolo player" gag. And everything is a bet, from shooting basketball with kids to slapping half of a night's earnings on the hood of a car in an abrupt attempt to get a mugger's gun away from your face. Play or get killer, play and get killed. "I feel like a winner, but I know I look like a loser." Nothing enhances Altman's visual-aural density like the swirling bustle of rummy circles, race tracks and boxing rings. The escorting roommates (Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles) consoling each other in bed, the frowzy barfly yammering about her pooch, the casino janitor surreptitiously slipping a coin into the slot-machine—every character carries an entire comedy of desolation inside them. From Los Angeles to Reno, compulsive risk and bluff not as metaphors for life (cf. Quintet) but for instinctive filmmaking. The ruthless bucket of cold water hits as Segal shakes the winning chips out of his pocket and feels "suddenly very tired," he sets out to return to a home that's long dissipated while Gould remains trapped in the Chuck-a-Luck roulette. (Or is it a mandala spiral?) Cinematography by Paul Lohmann. With Edward Walsh, Joseph Walsh, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Ruick, Barbara London, John Considine, Jay Fletcher, and Phyllis Shotwell.
--- Fernando F. Croce |